Jobs to be Done

In Clayton Christensen’s new book, Competing Against Luck, the authors delve into the importance of gaining a deep understanding of what your customers desire. The book lays out a Theory of Jobs to be Done in a very compelling way. To me this is a great example of extending Deming’s ideas with a great deal of useful content on how to effectively become more customer focused.

We all have many jobs to be done in our lives. Some are little (pass the time while waiting in line); some are big (find a more fulfilling career). Some surface unpredictably (dress for an out-of-town business meeting after the airline lost my suitcase); some regularly (pack a healthful lunch for my daughter to take to school). When we buy a product, we essentially “hire” it to help us do a job. If it does the job well, the next time we’re confronted with the same job, we tend to hire that product again. And if it does a crummy job, we “fire” it and look for an alternative.

The article and the book discuss the insight gained by understanding what your potential customers desire (what job the customers are trying to accomplish) and what prevents them from becoming customers.

That realization helped Moesta and his team begin to grasp the struggle potential home buyers faced. “I went in thinking we were in the business of new-home construction,” he recalls. “But I realized we were in the business of moving lives.”

This is reminiscent of W. Edwards Deming’s discussion on truly understanding the needs of customers and also Russell Ackoff’s ideas on seeking solutions by looking at the larger containing system. Often innovative solutions can be found if you expand the scope of what you see as the system. By expanding the scope of your vision from the product you provide (a house) to the larger system you can learn that the objections to moving you hear are not the primary objections. Often it isn’t concern about the house, or competitor’s offerings, that is stopping them from becoming customers but worries about all the hassles involved with moving.

If you see your job from the customer’s perspective you may change the scope of your offerings. You can add services that help the potential customer chose you. In the book, they explore the example mentioned in the article in more detail. They also discuss how an online university changed their processes to address the issues their potential customers faced in the “hiring” process. They changed, not the “product” (education), but the processes supporting potential students making the decision to hire Southern New Hampshire University.

Competing Against Luck is packed with valuable ideas:

Throughout this book we will refer to jobs in shorthand simplistic terms for ease of reference – but it’s important to emphasize that a well-defined job is multilayered and complex. And that is actually a good thing. Why? Because it means that perfectly satisfying someone’s job likely requires not just creating a product, but engineering and delivering a whole set of experiences that address the many dimensions of the job and integrating those experiences into the company’s processes. When you’ve done that well, it’s almost impossible for competitors to copy.

A very simple view of the concept is that customers want ability to create a 1/4″ hole in wood, they don’t want a drill. A drill is a means of getting a 1/4″ hole but if you focus on making a better drill you may miss possibilities for other solutions.

Dr. Deming would talk about the importance of knowing what business you were in. If you are in the business of making carburetors you are at risk of technological innovation putting you out of business. If you are in the business of injecting fuel within internal combustion engines you can then produce fuel injectors that eliminate the need for catalytic converters.

Competing Against Luck provides useful concepts and strategies to use to create a deeply customer focused organization. Understanding and applying the concepts presented in this book will improve your ability to make the customer the most important part of your processes. Both W. Edwards Deming and Clayton Christensen understand that the customer is part of the system in a way that most others don’t appreciate.

You must design processes that incorporate the complete scope of providing products and services. Putting the product or service into the customers hand should not be seen as the end of the process. We need to pay attention to how our customers use our product and not see that as something outside our sphere of influence.

In the book they even discuss the idea that it is important to avoid customers that seek to “hire” your offering when it won’t provide a good solution to their Job to be Done. If customers buy your product and are disappointed that will impact their impression of your company and their feedback to others about your company, even if they are trying to use it for a Job to Do that you didn’t intend. It is part of your responsibility to inform consumers well, so they “hire” you for the right Jobs.

Whenever you see a compensating behavior, pay very close attention, because it’s likely a clue that there is an innovation opportunity waiting to be seized – one on which customers would place a high value. But you won’t even see these anomalies – compensating behavior and cobbled-together workarounds – if you’re not fully immersed in the context of their struggle.

This is a powerful concept. And it put in concrete terms the more vague idea of understanding your customer’s desires. When you appreciate the importance of the user gemba you know to pay close attention to customers. The specific advice of watching for compensating behavior as customers use your products or services and then looking for innovation and improvement opportunities is wise.

I still remember attending a seminar with Brian Joiner (Variation and Management) over 20 years ago and discussing Toyota watching customers load their cars at grocery stores. Toyota observed that the customer’s used various compensating methods to try and keep their bags stable for the ride home. Toyota studied potential solutions to this Job to be Done they saw their customers had and they introduced cargo nets to help secure loads. In another example, a tool manufacturer watched customers using their product and noticed they taped and otherwise improved the handles to be more comfortable and have a better grip in their hand. The toolmaker working on improving the design based on the workarounds they saw.

This book extends ideas that are not necessarily completely new in useful ways. In addition to this example, making more clear (it seems to me) how to focus on customers in ways that help you improve and innovate, the Theory of Jobs really does create some new insight that was not understood previously. Creating the Theory of Jobs has been underway for over 20 years, so there have been many articles and details on this concept prior to the publication of this book. But this book really puts the whole concept together exceptionally well.

While many in the business world associate the word “theory” with something purely academic or abstract, nothing could be further from the truth. Theories that explain causality are among the most important and practical tools business leaders can have.

This is another wonderfully stated explanation from the book; and it echoes W. Edwards Deming’s teaching on the importance of theory.

This book is one of the most useful business books I have read in the last 10 years. I strongly recommend it.

4 Comments

[…] unaware of. Learn to get a deep understanding of your customers and potential customers focus on the customer’s “Jobs to be Done.” Also learn to be thoughtful about the use of data: Understanding Data, Simpson’s Paradox, […]

The story of Jobs to Be Done goes back 25 years. In 1991, Anthony Ulwick first proposed that to gain deep insight into the customer’s needs, companies should stop focusing on the product and the customer and instead should understand the “underlying process” (or job) the customer is trying to execute when they are using a product or service.

Ulwick is credited by Clayton Christensen for introducing him to the idea (in 1991) that was to become JTBD. Watch this video

You may want to read Ulwick’s book – “Jobs to be Done: From Theory to Practice” and check out http://www.strategyn.com – the company that has been helping companies with JTBD for the past 25 years.

[…] today many companies would benefit greatly from adopting this thinking. So often companies fail to focus on the needs of customers. So often companies focus on the short term to the detriment of long term […]

You may be surprised to learn that Bob Moesta, who contributed significantly to the practical process behind Jobs to be Done, was W. Edwards Deming’s intern.

From a presentation he gave that I had the pleasure of watching, he noted a saying he heard of Deming’s that he never forgot: “Noting is random. Everything is caused.” You could say JTBD is seeking, via a systems view, to find the cause of behavior to make the most effective choices about how to work with it.